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September: What a rubbish month it’s been

September has been a very rubbish sort of month. Happily, I mean a month where rubbish (or the avoidance of it) has been a popular topic, especially amongst us with an interest in all things sustainable.

Awareness events

We kicked off the month with Rachelle Strauss’s Zero Waste Week, looking at the many ways to create less waste on the theme of ‘reuse’. You can see my posts about reducing waste in the bathroom and kitchen here and here.

Some of my favourite blog posts from this week were:

Zoe of Eco Thrifty Living wrote a really inspiring post on her first Zero Waste Week event, where people swapped clothes, books, DVDs and more and made a rather lovely mural from waste materials.

Dawn’s ever-lovely blog, Be a Green Bean, let us have a nosey through her kitchen cupboards as she used up the contents of the cupboards rather than buying more.

Jen at Make Do and Mend-able was as Continue reading “September: What a rubbish month it’s been” →

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Zero Waste Week: Kitchen and Food Swaps

The kitchen, the whole kitchen, and nothing but the kitchen (except the beginnings of the dining room and lounge)
The kitchen, the whole kitchen, and nothing but the kitchen (except the beginnings of the dining room and lounge)

In my second post for Zero Waste Week, we’re going into the kitchen! Renting in rather-pricey North London means that our kitchen is on what estate agents optimistically refer to as the ‘cosy’ side. On one hand, this is good for zero waste living as there’s very little space for over-shopping, either in the cupboards or the fridge (not that it’s doesn’t happen sometimes!). On the other, batch cooking is curtailed by a single freezer shelf and buying numerous large items in bulk is out.

Here are some of the good habits I’ve managed to develop on my ongoing zero waste journey:

Tea

Loose tea is available to fill my own bags with from the ever-wonderful Earth Natural Foods in Kentish Town, where everything comes in beautiful self-serve glass jars. This week, WestyWrites also mentioned on Twitter that a number of Whittard’s branches have refill options, where she reports that they were happy to refill her own container.

If you don’t mind the possibility of a small amount of plastic in your teabags (who knew?! Polythene Pam at Plastic is Rubbish, that’s who), but don’t want the horrible crinkly unrecyclable plastic-y foil and the extra layer of unrecyclable plastic round the outside as per a normal box of tea, there is another option! Continue reading “Zero Waste Week: Kitchen and Food Swaps” →

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Zero Waste Week: Bathroom Swaps

This year’s Zero Waste Week runs from 7th-13th September and the theme is ‘reuse’. Anyone and everyone can get involved, just go along to www.zerowasteweek.co.uk and make your pledge! My pledge is to purchase and use nothing that goes to landfill for the week. Self-promo moment – you’ll also be seeing a post from me on the Zero Waste Week website about some of my antics at work very soon!

Zero Waste Week is the invention of Rachelle Strauss, and you can read more about her journey and how she started this initiative on her website and in this article she wrote for the Guardian last year.

I started going down the zero waste path a couple of years ago, and for me it’s an ongoing journey – there are so many areas of our lives where waste just seems to magically appear! The decision to not use resources, or use resources that don’t create excess packaging, has to be just that – a decision. It doesn’t happen by accident. Our society set up at the moment is based around convenience – coffee to go, sandwiches to grab at lunch, and even if you do have the time to slow down you’re likely to be confronted by supermarket pre-packed vegetables, ready meals and a million special offers on food wrapped in plastic (my personal bugbear being multi-pack crisps – non-recyclable plastic wrapped in extra non-recyclable plastic just to sell us more crisps in one go!). Continue reading “Zero Waste Week: Bathroom Swaps” →